Family Medicine Charts and Graphs

The American Academy of Family Physicians has made these charts and graphs available for use by journalists to help illustrate the care delivered by family physicians. For additional information, please contact us.

Student interest in family medicine continued its upward trend in the 2016 Match. “Although we’re pleased that interest in family medicine is holding steady, the nation needs for that interest to rise dramatically,” said Wanda Filer, MD, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

More than 79 percent of graduating medical students complete their education with more than $100,000 in educational debt. More than one in 10 graduating family physicians must repay school loans for $300,000 or more.

Family physicians and their primary care colleagues rank lowest in income of all medical specialties. The U.S. health care system pays more for procedures that intervene in a disease process or injury than it pays for patient-physician office visits that prevent disease and injury. The result: an expensive health care system that strains the financial capacity of individuals, employers, and public safety net programs.(782 KB PDF)

Health care policy analysts say that efficient, high quality health care systems are based on primary medical care. The United States does not currently have such a system; only 41 percent of physicians (family physicians, internists, general pediatricians, and general practitioners) provide primary care services.

Family physicians have dramatically increased patients’ access to care. Eight in 10 family physicians provide open access/same-day scheduling and more nearly six in 10 provide extended/evening office hours and a web portal for secure messaging between patients and their family physicians.

The time spent providing patient care affects access to medical services. In addition to the time spent coordinating care with other professionals and community resources, reviewing charts, working with pharmacists and insurance companies, and other responsibilities outside the exam room, primary care physicians spend at least 75 percent of their office hours – more than 31 hours a week – providing direct care to patients. Four out of 10 primary care physicians offer evening and/or weekend office hours.

Family physicians have medical expertise to provide care for the entire patient. They see all ages from infants to adolescents to adults and provide care in both the community and in hospitals, nursing homes and hospice settings. More than seven in 10 family physicians provide chronic care management, adolescent medicine, geriatric care and care of infants and young children. They also see patients in urgent care, inpatient settings, emergency rooms and intensive care.

Most medical students are trained in university-based hospitals known as academic health centers, which care for the most seriously ill patients. This hospital-based education skews medical students’ perception of medical practice, because most patients get their care in doctors’ offices and community settings. In fact, very few of students’ future patients will actually require care in such a high-tech, tertiary care hospital as an academic health center.

Every state in the Union will need significantly more family physicians by 2020, according to the 2006 AAFP Workforce Report. The report predicted a national need for 139,531 family physicians by 2020. The United States already has a shortage of family physicians, and demand continues to rise. Merritt Hawkins, a national physician recruitment company, reports that recruitment requests for family physicians grew by 62 percent between 2006-2007 and 2007-2008. Requests for family physicians grew by 196 percent between 2004-2005 and 2007-2008.